Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
Alexia
The door swings open before either of us can stop it.
“Hey, Lexi, we brought you som—”
And the two figures stop in the threshold, staring in at us, still in a half-dressed embrace.
Marcus and Zachary. Their eyes scanning the tableau in front of them.
Then Marcus's eyes narrow and he storms in, pulling me from Rhys's arms.
“What did you do to her?” Marcus hisses.
Rhys frowns, takes my arm and gently pulls me back towards him. “What are you talking about?”
Zachary comes in and stands at my side, a little more wary, eyes still locked on my face. “Then why has she been crying? Did you do something to upset her?”
“I... don't think she was upset with what I did, no,” Rhys says, offence in his voice at the accusation.
Marcus spins to me. “But look at her eyes—”
“Guys, it's fine. Rhys didn't do anything.” I swipe under my eyes, aware of exactly how I must look, puffy, blotchy, and thoroughly kissed (and fucked) within an inch of my life. “Well. He did plenty. None of it upsetting.”
Rhys's mouth curls at the corner and I elbow him in the ribs hard enough that he grunts.
“Right. Okay, then, if you're sure.” Zachary drags a hand down his face like he's bracing for something, gaze flicking between the two of us, putting all the pieces together. “So why do you look like you've been crying for an hour, and why does it look like you two just—”
“Can we not do this in my office,” I say, “with the door open?”
So we end up at home twenty minutes later. The three of them lined up on the couch like an inordinately handsome jury, me pacing the rug in front of them as I recount my day in detail. Up to the part when I found Rhys waiting outside my office, that is.
“Yeah, I'm going to go have a word with Craig,” Marcus says, getting up from the couch.
“I'll drive,” Zachary adds.
“Sit down. Both of you.” I plant myself in front of them, arms spread out, as if I could stop even one of them. “Craig is a problem but... I'll sort it out. He's just a guy. I've dealt with guys like him before.”
This time all three of them leap to their feet, eyes raging, yelling at me for a list of said guys' names.
I rub my forehead and point back to the couch.
“Sit. Down.”
Rhys steps forward, reaching for the side of my face. “Do you have another headache?”
Zachary runs out to the kitchen and is back with a glass of cold water while Marcus has grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it around my shoulders before I can even answer.
It's so sweet and utterly ridiculous that I can't help but laugh.
I take the glass and hold onto the blanket as I give Rhys a smile. “Yes, I have a headache, but I'll be fine. But I think it's time we talked. All of us. Properly. So I need you guys to sit down.”
They don't. “Please. The sooner we talk the sooner I can lie down and rest.”
They all sit. Albeit with a little jostling and whining.
I wait for them to settle before I start.
“Okay.” I stop. Start again. “Look. I really don't know what to say.
I never expected this. I never planned for it, and I definitely never sat down one day and thought, right, I'm going to fall for three men, all my brother's best friends, who all live in the same house and also happen to love each other like brothers — bickering, annoying, immature brothers, but brothers nonetheless, because weird, right?
— and I know that sounds insane, I know how that sounds, but I have feelings, real feelings, for each of you, individually, as single people, not just as a unit of really good guys, and it's not like I'm comparing you against each other in some kind of running tally, because you're not — I don't see you as options, you're not a multiple choice question, you're three completely different people who I happen to also see as this whole unit, this whole thing, and I never wanted to be the reason that thing—”
I stop to take a much-needed breath and notice that as I've been pacing, the guys have been watching me like I'm playing a one-woman tennis match.
“Are you done?” Zachary's already on his feet again.
I frown, trying to replay what I've said. “I'm not sure I've even started.”
“Lexi, those were a lot of words,” Marcus says, “for someone who hasn't started.”
Zachary sits down on the armchair and catches my hand, pulling me onto his lap. “While you... keep thinking about what you want to say, want to hear what we have to say instead?”
I nod, mostly because my head hurts too much to argue.
One by one, they tell me.
And honestly, they're much better at this than I am.
They tell me they didn't see this coming either — not like this, not all three of them, not having to share.
But it's obvious, has been for weeks, that none of them are walking away from whatever this is.
Nobody's asking me to choose tonight. Nobody's asking me to choose at all, actually, not on any particular timeline.
I get to take exactly as long as I need.
“And that's — okay with you?” I look between them, waiting for the catch. “All of you?”
“No.” Rhys doesn't hesitate.
Marcus and Zachary both turn to glare at him.
“But I'll do what I can.” He holds my eyes, steady. “I know what it's like not to be with you. There's no version of my life where I'm okay with going back to that. So — no, it's not okay. But I'm staying anyway.”
I give him a grateful smile.
“And how does this actually work?” I ask. “It's... crazy... right?”
“We'll make it work,” Zachary says, then leans in and kisses me, seemingly unbothered by the fact that we have an audience. “You're worth it.”
Rhys makes a low growling sound.
“But you'll have to get your dog to heel,” Marcus adds, with a roll of his eyes.
Rhys is up off the couch, one hand closing gently round my wrist. “Yeah, well. She's going to have to train me really hard.” His mouth drops close to my ear. “Starting right now.”
He picks me up, one arm under my knees, and I catch Marcus's grin and Zachary's head shake over Rhys's shoulder as he carries me down the hall and kicks the bedroom door shut behind us.
“Hey, I want to be with you,” I tell him, once he's set me down on the edge of the bed.
“I want to be with you as well.” He crouches in front of me, framing my face in his hands.
“But I have to be honest. I can't choose. Not yet. Maybe not for a while,” I admit.
“I know.” His thumb strokes along my cheekbone. “That's why I'm giving you time. To work out that you don't actually need those two asshol—”
“WE HEARD THAT.” Two voices, in perfect unison, from directly outside the door. “YOU'RE NOT GETTING RID OF US YET, DICKWEED!”
I bury my burning face in Rhys's chest, laughing so hard I can barely breathe, and I feel him laugh too. The rare, gorgeous sound makes my chest ache all over again for a completely different reason.
“See?” He presses a kiss to my hair. “They're proving it already.”
He tugs me up off the bed and steers me gently towards the bathroom instead. “Come on. Let me get you clean.” His mouth finds the shell of my ear again. “So I can get you dirty again.”
If you'd asked me a month ago what it would look like, living with, and sleeping with, three grown men, I would not have pictured this.
I would not have pictured a Google Calendar with colour-coded outings and dates that none of them admit to screwing up but somehow get screwed up all the time anyway.
I would not have pictured Marcus texting me a photo of his, Zachary's, and Rhys's bed every morning, asking WHICH ONE TONIGHT?
I would not have pictured playing mediator to my brother's best friends over who got to walk next to me in the grocery store, or whether calling shotgun works for a human as well as a carseat.
I would not have imagined switching to decaf because every morning I was presented with three coffees, and if I didn't take all three, someone would be sulky until dinner time.
But it's okay.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
But don't tell them that.
About six weeks into my three-month contract, Rhys walks me to the department staff meeting, the two of us fresh out of an hour-long picnic-planning session that was more fifty-two minutes of making out than eight minutes arguing over who was going to do the work we should've been doing while making out.
“You want to go in together or...?” he asks when we get there.
“No,” I say with a grateful smile. “I think it might be better if we go in separately today.”
The reason becomes clear when I walk in and go straight up to Craig, who's pouring himself a coffee.
“Hey,” I say, holding out a cup as if to ask him to pour. It's the first interaction we've had in weeks that isn't purely about tute planning.
“Hi.” He's wary, but tops up my cup.
I wait until he's done before I nod a thanks and then say, “So, how's your research going? You done with the analysis, right?”
He nods once, cautious.
“That sounds great. You worked so hard on it.”
Something in his shoulders loosens, just slightly. “Actually. Pretty much just finalising the write-up at this point.” A pause. “Your ideas really helped a lot.”
“That's great,” I say, trying not to sound too eager. But he's just given me the in I needed. Feeling Rhys's eyes on me gives me the encouragement I need. “That's actually kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Somehow, despite the chaos of work, study and the guys, we do manage to find some sort of rhythm and routine.
One of those things being, on Friday nights, to escape the ear-splitting decibels of man noise coming from Marcus having some of his guys over to watch “the game” (no, I have no idea what game it is, I'm assuming Aussie footy considering the small tight shorts the guys are wearing on the screen) and get some time with Zachary, I go with him to the bar and set myself at an empty spot at the end of the bar with my laptop and an impressive array of pens and highlighters.
It's not too crowded tonight, and there's a steady hum of music and chatter, but not too much that it interferes with me concentrating.
Zachary's playing second-string bartender, spending most of his time doing the rounds when they don't need him to pull beers, me highlighting increasingly incomprehensible sentences about multilateral sanctions regimes, both of us trading commentary across the bar whenever there's a lull.
It's during one of these lulls, while Zachary has walked a regular out to his car, when a guy in a leather jacket plants himself on the stool beside me and starts up a line about how a woman that pretty shouldn't be sitting alone at the bar on a Friday night.
I give him a polite smile and tell him I wasn't actually alone. But even if I were, there'd be nothing wrong with that.
He can tell his opening line didn't have the effect he was hoping for, so he pivots, asking me questions related to my study. Fortunately for him, he's not being pushy or rude, so I answer some of his questions without giving him any extra encouragement.
“Anyway, I get it now, why my opening line didn't land.” He shrugs, seemingly entirely unbothered by his own failure of five minutes ago. “You've spent years being trained to spot bad diplomacy from a mile off. I basically invaded your airspace with no warning and zero legitimate justification.”
A laugh escapes me. “Are you saying you hitting on me was an unprovoked act of war?”
“I mean, if the UN Security Council were sitting right here, I don't love my odds.” He knocks back the last of his drink. “Worth a shot, though. Sanctions can't be worse than rejection.”
I laugh again despite myself. I'm not attracted to him but I gotta give him credit for being a good sport.
Or so I thought, until I hear Zachary's voice from the other end of the bar. “Mate. Leave her alone. She's trying to work.”
I feel more than see Zachary's whole demeanour change from almost ten metres away. It's genuinely alarming how fast it happens — the easy, dry warmth gone in an instant, replaced by something dangerously territorial that has the bloke actually leaning back a few inches on his stool.
The guy raises an eyebrow, clearly aware of exactly what tone he's hearing in Zachary's voice. He leans closer to me, as if sharing a secret. “Didn't realise studying was a team sport. Is he the coach or water boy?”
“Well, individual sports can get a little lonely,” I say, leaning away from him, giving Zachary a wave. He doesn't return it, just continues eyeing the guy. “And he's more like my offensive guard.”
“Well, consider myself blocked. Have a good night, it was nice talking to you.” The guy holds his hands up in Zachary's direction but still gives me a very obvious wink.
Ugh. Zachary's still standing there with his jaw set and both hands flat on the bar like he's stopping himself from leaping over it and chasing the guy down.
“Hey,” I say, sliding down the bar to stand in front of him. “I had it handled.”
“Yeah?” He doesn't relax, not fully. “It's just that he looked like he was ready to handle you...”
“He didn't. And anyway, he could've wanted whatever he wanted, I didn't. You've got nothing to worry about. Believe me, I already have more than enough on my hands.” I nod pointedly at him, then in the vague direction of home.
That gets the ghost of a smile out of him, and he leans over to give me a possessive kiss, right before a group of a dozen very loud twenty-somethings pour through the door and he has to peel himself away to deal with them, tossing me an apologetic look over his shoulder.
The sudden rush helps me get another hour of reading done before one of his servers leans over the bar, apologetic. “Sorry, Alexia, we're totally slammed — would you mind grabbing a box of napkins from the storeroom? We're completely out and I can't leave the floor.”
“No problem, I needed to stretch my legs anyway,” I say, sliding off the stool, closing my laptop, and tucking it behind the bar.
The storeroom slash Zachary's office is past the restrooms, down a dim corridor.
I'm always surprised by how clean Zachary keeps it, expecting it to smell of spilled beer and paper goods, but there's something very Zachary about it, and I love it.
I have my hand on the storeroom door handle, when a hand closes round my arm from behind.
I scream just before something covers my eyes and everything goes dark.